Luxury car companies targeting Russia

As the West struggles on through the recession, businesses are looking east for their new super wealthy customers.

This is one of the latest trends among luxury car manufacturers, who are starting to market their new vehicles to countries like Russia and China.

Volkswagen AG's Lamborghini, for example, is due to release a super-sized SUV in an attempt to make its products more appealing to these markets, Bloomberg reported. However, it will take some time before the product is on general sale, with a study vehicle to be shown at the 2012 Beijing Auto Show this April and a production version only rumoured for 2016.

Other supercar manufacturers have already got the ball rolling, with both Maserati and Ferrari well on the road to delivering much larger versions of their European vehicles in the pursuit of new Russian and Chinese customers who take the mantra 'bigger is better' rather more seriously than their Western counterparts.

Their efforts are likely to prove worthwhile, since sales of luxury cars in China are predicted to double to over 8,000 vehicles by 2015, while Russia looks set to deliver five times as many sales than this year with around 500 vehicles mooted to be sold.

These figures were compiled by IHS Automotive, which compared the data with Europe where a 21 per cent increase is set to see sales of 11,700 cars over the same period. So while for the moment the new eastern markets aren't competing with the west in terms of volume, their substantial growth rates suggest that the Russian luxury market is likely to be very important indeed for future sales.